April was a very busy month with more breakers arriving from around Katherine. At Riverboyne we usually have 10-15 horses in work at any one time generally consisting of show and hack horses, campdrafters and station horses.
With the taste of the WA Campdrafting scene still fresh on the mind, I flew down for the Dardanup Campdraft, just east of Bunbury in WA’s picturesque southwest. Graeme and Jill Oliver again kindly offered me the opportunity to campaign their gelding ‘Acres Of Play’ in the Novice A event following our success at the Mayanup Campdraft a month earlier. Although the finals cattle were challenging in comparison to the beautiful big fresians we were spoilt with in the first round (something I am not used to in the Territory), we did manage to put another score on the board to win the event. Graeme and Jill were wrapped with the outcome and confirmed the gelding’s recent great form was due to them now feeding Prydes Bio Mare and Easi–Prep!
For the next week we stayed with the McLarty family at Blythewood, an hour south of Perth, where we were kept busy riding and training 12 horses for a number of clients. This coincided with WA’s largest Campdraft, the Boar Swamp Campdraft, which was held over the ANZAC long weekend on the McLarty’s farm and organised by the hard working Boar Swamp Campdraft Club. I again competed on Acres Of Play and managed to win the Open Top Cut Out. The Boar Swamp Campdraft Club were over the moon to this year welcome Pryde’s as one of their highly valued sponsors for the three-day event. WA’s Pryde’s EasiFeed WA Sales Manager & Sponsored Rider Sharon Jarvis attended the event on Monday to present winners of given event.
It was an extremely well organised event, with a great friendly and family orientated atmosphere, attracting competitors from as far north as the Kimberley and Pilbara regions.
The Committee were stuck for entertainment on the Sunday night so asked some random Territory horse-breaker to get up and belt out some tunes. The evening quickly escalated into one hell of a party – something I had previously been warned about with these WA drafters!